Recent studies have suggested that language aptitude is a domain-general and flexible trait to acquire foreign languages, regarding various cognitive abilities such as memory systems as its crucial components. Despite a growing interest in working memory, however, much remains unknown about the impact of associative memory on language aptitude.…

The study sought to understand the general trajectory of children's executive function, as well as whether there was heterogeneity among monolingual English-speaking and dual language learning children in their growth of executive function. In addition, the study examined whether monolingual English-speaking and dual language learning children…

Languages differ regarding the depth, structure, and syntactic domains of recursive structures. Even within a single language, some structures allow infinite self-embedding while others are more restricted. For example, when expressing ownership relation, English allows infinite embedding of the prenominal genitive "-s," whereas the…

The shift of focus from a cognitive to social view has drawn the attention of second language assessment researchers to delve into interactional competence as an intriguing topic in paired oral tests. To fill the gap on how interactional patterns compare across L1 and L2 interactions this study was specifically set to explore and compare 45 paired…

Previous studies have shown that Chinese speakers and non-Chinese speakers exhibit different patterns of cross-modal congruence for the lexical tones of Mandarin Chinese, depending on which features of the pitch they attend to. But is this pattern of language-specific listening a conscious cultural strategy or an automatic processing effect? If…

Evidence of sensitivity to graphotactic and morphological patterns in English spelling has been extensively examined in monolinguals. Comparatively few studies have examined bilinguals' sensitivity to spelling regularities. The present study compared late Chinese-English bilinguals and English monolinguals on their sensitivity to systematic…

The lack of diversity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields is a vital issue that carries into the workforce. This study aims to enhance underrepresented students' learning experience and emotional engagement by replacing mathematical abstractions with physical analogues. In the context of a post-secondary STEM course,…

During spoken word processing, native (L1) listeners use allophonic variation to predictively rule out word competitors and speed up word recognition. There is some evidence that second language (L2) learners develop an awareness of allophonic distributions in their L2, but whether they use their knowledge to facilitate word recognition online,…

Teacher self-efficacy (TSE) changes according to context. Limited research has been conducted to understand how TSE can vary in relation to student characteristics or the student-teacher relationship (STR) in preschool. The aims of the current study were to 1) examine student-specific TSE variability among monolingual English-speaking and…

Second language (L2) learners make gender errors with possessive pronouns. In production, these errors are modulated by the gender match between the possessor and possessee noun. We examined whether this so-called match effect extends to L2 comprehension by attempting to replicate a recent study on gender predictions in first language (L1) German…

To become a native speaker, beyond obligatory rules, children need to learn systematic variation in the language, as it is present at all levels of language structure and is an integral part of linguistic knowledge. To give an example in English, speakers sometimes pronounce words ending in -ing with -in' (e.g., working vs. workin') depending on…

Although extensive research has focused on the perceptual abilities of second language (L2) learners, a significant gap persists in understanding how cognitive functions like phonological short-term memory (PSTM) and nonverbal intelligence (IQ) impact L2 speech perception. This study sets out to investigate the discrimination of L2 English…

This study investigates the perception of the three Mandarin high vowels /i, u, y/ after dental, retroflex, and palatal fricatives and affricates (/s/-/[voiceless alveolar affricate]/-/[voiceless alveolar affricate][superscript voiceless glottal fricative]/; /[voiceless retroflex sibilant fricative]/-/[voiceless alveolar affricate]/-/[voiceless…

This study investigates the processing of "wh"-dependencies in English by native speakers and advanced Mandarin Chinese-speaking learners. We examined processing at a filled gap site that was in a licit position (non-island) or located inside an island, a grammatically unlicensed position. Natives showed N400 in the non-island condition,…

Many studies have revealed multilinguals' reduced emotionality of a foreign language (LX) compared to a first language (L1). Contrary to the bulk of research so far, which has focused on multilinguals' own emotion experience or emotion processing, this study focuses on interpersonal communication and investigates how one perceives the intensity…